The comic — who replaced David Hasselhoff as a judge in 2010 — has been vocal about his desire to return for months, but NBC waited until Tuesday to invite him back to the ratings-challenged series.

Sources tell The Post that NBC waited to exercise its option on Mandel until it found a replacement for Sharon Osbourne, who quit at the end of last season following a nasty personal dispute with the network.

So far, no official announcement has been made.

Mandel will once again work alongside Howard Stern, who confirmed his return in December.

“I’m going to re-judge for my fourth year,” he said in an interview with Access Hollywood.

“I phoned Howard, and I said I’m coming back, and he said ‘who is this?’.”

Mandel’s pickup comes less than three weeks before “Talent” is scheduled to tape its first live show in New Orleans.

The top rated summer show since 2006, “Talent” lost almost 25 percent of its audience last year when Stern was added and production moved to Newark.

The network blamed much of the decline on scheduling changes caused by the Olympics.

Season eight is again expected to originate from The New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

It had been speculated that NBC and creator Simon Cowell would use Osbourne’s departure as an opportunity rebuild the entire judging panel and revitalize the aging show.

In 2011, Cowell, told The Post that he hoped to add a fourth judge to the panel — “somebody younger. A girl. Someone who will not be afraid of Sharon [Osbourne] and Howard and fight for a different type of act than they would.”

While further additions to the judging table seem unlikely, Stern said in December he would like to work with Oprah, Cher or Rosie O’Donnell.